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Atlas robot does parkour

blog.bostondynamics.com

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Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#141

Post by vindarel »

wonderwonder wrote: post #84
delgaudm wrote: post #8

I'm not a particularly pessimistic person in general, but I don't know ...this tech, while cool, feels like the precursor to a worse future in general. Maybe I've seen too much sci-fi, but these robots look like optimizing for future soldiers, law enforcement etc. Given all the other Self-Driving / Facial Recognition / Loss of Privacy / Deepfake / "AI is bad at recognizing $situation"-type posts, and as all these tec…

I could see this. Especially robot armies marching back into the middle east. I can also see robot caregivers for the elderly. Or in cities built for pedestrians a robot walking next to you carrying your shopping bags or escorting your kids to school with a live video feed back to the parents. Fire trucks pulling up and 50 robots jumping out and running into a burning building to carry people out. Could go either way…

Elderly people don't want robots, and yeah, good things© are unlikely to happen anyways. When new startups want to help people©, they are actually forced to go where the market is. "Well, only two years working for the autonomous drones for the army and we'll focus back on helping farmers". And years go by. Employees can believe in that vision, but can be tricked for years. They should change jobs. (there was a very true and touching testimony in this book (fr)[1]).

Also I believe 50 firemen robots is unlikely the best way to fight a fire :p Like autonomous cars: impose autonomous cars to lower car accidents in cities and save lives©? Just design the streets differently and prevent the cars to drive so fast…

[1] https://www.amazon.fr/Merci-changer-m%C3%A9tier-Lettres-robo...

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#142

Post by Cipater »

thefreeman wrote: post #116
ArtDev wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite scifi series is the Polity Universe by Neal Asher. The Polity are these benevolent AI that rule humanity after "The Quiet War". It is called that because not a single shot is fired because they just take control of all hightech weapons and technology one day. The books would be considered utopian scifi if the rest of the universe wasn't so gritty. Which is why it is my favorite series.

what is the first book in this series?

Prador Moon

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1060548.Prador_Moon

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#143

Post by ryankrage77 »

jvanderbot wrote: post #77
qiqing wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be great, though, if humans were no longer working warehouse jobs that strain their backs and their bladders?

Yes! Your warehouse would have to be a cleanroom (someone left a can of soda? Your robot just smashed through a shelf when it tried to step on it) In general, I'm an AI researcher and an AI skeptic. After 10 years in robotics, I'm learning that the Human Is Cheaper and where Human Is Expensive, we prefer toasters, not terminators. (just enough hard-coded / hard-wired adaptivity to get by with tons of supervision)

> Your warehouse would have to be a cleanroom

At which point you're back to an automated assembly line which needs very little dynamics or intelligence. The whole point of developing such advanced robots is so that you don't need to worry as much about that can on the floor.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#144

Post by ryankrage77 »

mrfusion wrote: post #63

Any ideas why the physics looks slightly off like gravity is slightly too slow? Maybe it’s slow motion or sped up? Or I’m wondering if it looks like both feet are off the ground when really only one is and supported by the other?

I think it's just that the robots are very heavy?

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#145

Post by numpad0 »

prepend wrote: post #18

What can I do to defend myself against killer robots? Seriously, is there something simple that I can put in my glovebox of my car to use in case these robots start getting scary? Is there a simple household good that will work well against these, until they start explicitly shielding against stuff?

Some sort of high tensile wires that their limbs can’t overcome. Flexible materials are computationally hard even for actual humans, let alone for bunch of Python scripts running on a random Docker container somewhere.

Or Reason. Whichever available. Aim for torso.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#146

Post by rglover »

prepend wrote: post #18

What can I do to defend myself against killer robots? Seriously, is there something simple that I can put in my glovebox of my car to use in case these robots start getting scary? Is there a simple household good that will work well against these, until they start explicitly shielding against stuff?

Pocket EMP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siVGavpBiyA

Obviously would need to modify to generate more energy.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#147

Post by shadowgovt »

leshow wrote: post #132
btbuildem wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with anything else, we will have countermeasures for drone warfare as well.

Will we? It's not as if there is some countermeasure that will magically even the playing field, things seem to advance in the direction of escalation vs countermeasure.

I'm mildly surprised that in all the "AI goes rogue and turns a controlled smart munition into a murder-bot" fiction I've seen, I don't think anyone has drawn the relatively short line of causality along "Drone countermeasures disrupt remote control --> designers build in some basic decision-making to account for control interruption --> the decision-making gets sophisticated enough that it's trusted with kill / no-kill decisions --> jamming drone + scrambling IFF --> murder-bot turned on its 'owners.'"

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#148

Post by DonnyV »

nostrademons wrote: post #46
delgaudm wrote: post #8

I'm not a particularly pessimistic person in general, but I don't know ...this tech, while cool, feels like the precursor to a worse future in general. Maybe I've seen too much sci-fi, but these robots look like optimizing for future soldiers, law enforcement etc. Given all the other Self-Driving / Facial Recognition / Loss of Privacy / Deepfake / "AI is bad at recognizing $situation"-type posts, and as all these tec…

Boston Dynamics was initially DARPA funded and intended for military uses, so you're not wrong. The weird thing is that the more I study history, the more I think that the real dystopia started a century (and perhaps a couple millenia) before I was born, and we're just so adapted to it that we think it's normal. Take the "[Ro]bot" out of your headlines and those would be headlines from today, and if you ignore that t…

As soon as these robots are as maneuverable as people and even somewhat affordable for groups of hundreds to be made.

We're DONE!

The ultra rich and the Jeff Bezos of the world will buy them and return us to a world of Kings and Queens. Good luck trying to fight that.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#149

Post by gknoy »

thefreeman wrote: post #116
ArtDev wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite scifi series is the Polity Universe by Neal Asher. The Polity are these benevolent AI that rule humanity after "The Quiet War". It is called that because not a single shot is fired because they just take control of all hightech weapons and technology one day. The books would be considered utopian scifi if the rest of the universe wasn't so gritty. Which is why it is my favorite series.

what is the first book in this series?

From Neal Asher's Wikipedia page [0], you may consider starting with "Gridlinked" (2001). I've read 3/5 of the Agent Cormac series set in the Polity setting, starting with that book, and thoroughly enjoyed it. (Now I need to go read all the rest, apparently...)

The AI-ruling-humanity idea took a bit to warm up to. They do seem to be presented as benevolent overlords.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Asher#Bibliography

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#150

Post by shadowgovt »

vindarel wrote: post #141
wonderwonder wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could see this. Especially robot armies marching back into the middle east. I can also see robot caregivers for the elderly. Or in cities built for pedestrians a robot walking next to you carrying your shopping bags or escorting your kids to school with a live video feed back to the parents. Fire trucks pulling up and 50 robots jumping out and running into a burning building to carry people out. Could go either way…

Elderly people don't want robots, and yeah, good things© are unlikely to happen anyways. When new startups want to help people©, they are actually forced to go where the market is. "Well, only two years working for the autonomous drones for the army and we'll focus back on helping farmers". And years go by. Employees can believe in that vision, but can be tricked for years. They should change jobs. (there was a very…

> Just design the streets differently and prevent the cars to drive so fast…

... and then be ashamed of the lives lost because emergency responders couldn't get to the scene in time. :(

Everything is tradeoffs.

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